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If you've kept up with the debate on climate change, you probably know Richard Muller. He done a very good job pointing out some problems with previous studies that proved climate change was real and man made, especally in his analysis of the data sets from inaccurate weather stations. He recently completed an independent study and review of data, and he's man enough to stand up and say "I was wrong, climate change is real and made by man".

So maybe this will help get us off our butts and make some changes so my children will have a livable planet!

I've been more of a skeptic than a denier, always thinking that if man played a role in climate change it was certainly less than natural causes or earth's cycles. I'm still somewhat skeptical but it certainly seems like we're the cause, and so I suppose that means we're gonna have to be the solution!

IT might be an overly simplistic point of view, but I contend that if metorologists with high pwoered computers are unable to accurately model and predict weather withing even 30-60 minutes in many cases, why do we thing that we undertand ALL of the ciritical virables involved ot make a 1, 2 or 100 year prediciton of the climate?

I still think we only understand a small fraction of the vairables involved in global weather patterns and therefore attmpting to simply use air and water temperature trending is a little simplistic so we cannot isolate all the possible energy inputs and outputs from both humans and natural occurances.

I think climate pattern are cyclical, but we have far too little data to clearly determine the frequency and number of overlapping cycles.

" But he said he found it troubling that Muller claimed such definitive results without his work undergoing peer-review."

"
“What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of 2½ degrees?” Muller writes. “We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.”

So they took one set of data that search aroudn for somethign to correlate it to. That's not a controlled study where you have a control group then isolate all other vairables, then manipulate the remaining test vairable(s) to prove the correlation.

IT still doesn't clearly prove what protion of CO2 is manmade vs. naturally occuring, and all possible reasons why naturally occuring reactiosn that would maintain the CO2 balnce have changed. Is there simply more CO2 being created, less being absorbed and reacted, or both?

Sort of like Blood cholesterol levels. You can massivly reduce your intake of cholesterol in food, but it's no guarntee that you blood level will dramatically reduce. There's many other vairables including you predisposition to process that material, activity levels, volume of food consumption. Further, you have to consider if higher cholesterol levels are even truely harmful for that particular individual.

Finally, we focus on air temrpatures and do monitor sea temrpatures, but I don;t hink we have tens of thousands of tmeprature tranmitters scatterd at all ocean depths and witin the crust and core of the earth. TO study the total energy of a system, you have to consider energy system not just surface ambient air temps. Humidity levels, ground moisture levels, various forms of radiation, etc. I just don; think we're there you.

ALmost like measuring the delta T of a Split system and declaring that it's working correctly or incorrectly.

Funny it is amazing what the millons of funds used to promote man made GW cann do to convert key folks to the man made GW religion. Thank you very much.

"I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle."

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution."Sen. Barry Goldwater

Not sure I've heard it called that before. Not a bad way to describe it. Believing in GW requires a lot of faith in scientific theories that IMO have not been comclusively proven. Its' still just statistical data.

Not sure I've heard it called that before. Not a bad way to describe it. Believing in GW requires a lot of faith in scientific theories that IMO have not been comclusively proven. Its' still just statistical data.

Two questions, if I may:

1) What are the theroies that have not been proven? My scepticism was based more on the data used and how it was collected, rather than on the theory that greenhouse gases cause warming of the atmosphere or that burning of fossil fuels can dump more of those gasses into the atmosphere. I'd like to re-examine those or other theroies if they are also suspect.

2) What do you mean by "statistical data"? Do you mean only the temperature differences? Because as I understand it that is only part of the data sets, for example they've also measure CO2 levels changing over time, and that is more "real data" to me than "statistical data"(we all know how stats can be used to prove...anything!)

You have to look at things as a net sum equation. There are producers of CO2 and consumers of CO2. There are both natural occuring sources and natural consumers.. We're only measuring the current airborne levels. CO2 is also contained in water. Water by mass, makes up a much larger portion of the earth than air.

Yes, they have tested on a small scale in a lab that CO2 can have a greehouse effect. However, it'sly one of many GHG, methane being a much more potent one. I belive the vast majority of methane in the atmosphere is naturally occuring from decomposition and animal digestion processes.

Plants absorb CO2. You only have to live in a rural area to realize how insignificant a car driving on a roadway is compared to the sum of plant life in the sorroundings.

We only have clearly reliable data going back a relatively short timeframe. Without 2000+ years of data (not data extrapolated from ice cores...please, you think that's accurate? How can we rule out shift in planter orientation, changes in solar radiation (where all our energy comes from) how all of those interact. The earth axis has actually shifted after earthquakes. How does that impact ocean current, solar radiation, etc.

I don't think we have a full understanding of ocean currents and, how they change and what impact they have on the climate.

Consider this. Coal & petroleum were once plant life. That means their carbon contect came from CO2 that was once in the atmosphere. Nothing is created or destroyed on earth. We're simply returning the CO2 to the atmosphere. returned in a rate that exceeds the tiem it took to remove it. DO we really know for an absolute fact how long it takes to generate oil and coal? No, it has to be extrapolated.

How does CO2 released from wildfires and volcanic erruptions compare to human activities? When you think about it, fossil fules are realy quite natural. Buring them and the release of them is a normal occurance, just not at the current rate of consumption. What I haven't seen studies are the machanisms that counter high CO2 levels or clear evidence that CO2 levels going back over 1000 years were higher or lower.

I'll admit that I could be better read on these subjects.

Bottom line is that I haven't seen anything other than small scale lab tests followed by crunching data and trying to find trends that match other data trends.

I believe we think too highly of ourselves to think we can affect the weather in such a manner.

(The wise men of modern thought) adore a god made of putty or of wax - plastic, effeminate, molluscous, with no masculine faculty about him, and no quality that entitles him to the respect of just and honest men, for a being who cannot be angry at wrongdoing is destitute of one of the essential virtues, and a moral Ruler who is not angry with the wicked, and who refuses to punish crime, is not divine. ---Spurgeon

I believe we think too highly of ourselves to think we can affect the weather in such a manner.

+1.

As a side note, I wonder how many on this site just glancing through "new posts" might see "Climate Change" and their first thought is that maybe Ingersoll Rand is to blame for climate change with all those "Climate Changers" they sell. I guess only if it's hooked up to a R22 Chiller.

While it is true that CO2 acts as an insulator, its effects are so small, and man's contribution is such a small portion, that if man quit producing CO2 altogether there would be no noticeable effect on the temperature of the earth. The earth produces 186 billion tons of CO2 per year. 6 billion of that is produced by man. But those 186 billion tons of CO2 are only a very small small contributor to the greenhouse effect of earth's atmosphere. Water vapor is the main contributor, both as an insulator and in the formation of clouds, which act as reflectors. Cloud formation is controlled by cosmic rays, among other things. Cosmic rays are deflected by solar activity. Water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect.

So not only does the sun warm the earth, but solar activity controls thermal insulation of the atmosphere.

But even with all the insulation provided at various levels in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect only plays a small role in the earth's climate. It keeps the earth warm, but it has little effect on variations in temperature.

Astronomers have been observing solar activity for 400 years. They have been using it to accurately predict climate change for the last 350 years. These predictions are much more accurate than any CO2 models.

Climate change occurs centuries before parallel changes in CO2 levels, not at the same time as changes in CO2 levels, and not after changes in CO2 levels. If anything, climate change is a leading indicator of changes in CO2 levels, not the other way around.

The earth goes through warm periods and cold periods. Right now we coming out of a cold period, so we're getting slightly warmer. But that increase in warmth is mostly in the northern hemisphere. The ice in Antarctica is growing, not shrinking. There is some shrinkage in the narrow peninsula south of South America, but that's the only part of Antarctica where the ice is not increasing.

I can't open the links on the computer I'm on right now (this thing is destined to be flung against a wall pretty darn soon!) but if I may, I'd like to address a couple things you point out.

First of all, regarding Antarctic and ice loss / gain -- most studies I've read conclude that there is a net loss of ice in Antarctica. There is substantial evidence that the interior of Antarctica has cooled, but the edges have warmed quite a bit. The circular winds in the region apparently prevent the warmer air from reaching the interior. These winds in turn appear to be strengthening due to the hole in the ozone layer, so it's interesting that one man-made effect is counter-acting another man-made effect!

It's also important to remember that the studies that try and predict how global warming will progress do make allowances for uneven warming and even some regions warming while others cool (while the "total" temperature continues to rise).

As for how much CO2 is produced by man versus nature, I believe the issue at hand is not "how much" but "how balanced". That is, the science shows that for the past 500,000 years, the amount of CO2 levels remained pretty constant, while in recent centuries it has risen. The idea is not that man is producing more CO2 than nature but that nature isn't absorbing the extra CO2 man produces quickly enough to offset the warming.

The cosmic rays theory was very interesting to me when I first read about it, but there have been many other studies that disprove it. The more I read, the more shocked I was to see how little clouds are understood (in terms of their formation and impact on cooling/heating). At any rate, as I understand it, the cosmic ray / cloud theory is based on the idea that the rays would give an electric charge to aerosols, which in turn would group together and make particles large enough to form droplets. But the atmosphere already has better / larger cloud condensation particles already.

Thanks again for the response and the links. I'll read them once I get home tonight!